Months ago, word on the street that Star Wars: In Concert was coming to town. For some reason, Claude and I weren’t too interested in going, and Benoit had never written back. So we forgot about it. Then all of a sudden, Benoit realizes it’s coming to town which proves he just doesn’t read emails from me, and promptly convinces us to go. It didn’t take TOO much convincing. I did opt for the cheapest tickets. The $32 ones which turned out to be $46 after all the great Capital Tickets surcharges.
After having a bite to eat at Benoit’s (while trying out the new Super Mario Bros. game…excellent!), we drove out to the Scotiabank Place where there was NO traffic. Benoit was scared that it got cancelled. In the end, there was no cancellation, it just wasn’t that popular. 😉
We arrived and spied the merchandise. A $50 t-shirt of a Stormtrooper looks awesome enough, but it’s a little too pricey for this guy. Claude arrived and we headed to check out the film props that were scattered around the arena.
Let’s be honest here, people know I am a Star Wars fan. I would even admit to being more than a fan. So it is with little surprise that as soon as we started walking around the place, I got excited. Like, school girl screaming excited. Ewok outfits! C-3PO! Jedi knight costumes! Blasters!
The holy grail was Han Solo in carbonite. I got a picture next to it and I hope it turned out alright. The one on my camera wasn’t the best, but Claude said his came out fine. Benoit and Claude also got a sweet picture next to a statue of Yoda.
Turns out that there weren’t a whole lot of tickets sold to the event so our tickets to the 300L were not valid. In turn, they gave us free upgraded seats to section 120! Hot dog, this was awesome! We found our seats (where Claude and I realized we sat for the Pearl Jam concert in 2005) and the electricity was in the air. Ahead of us was the largest video screen known to man, and we knew Star Wars would be shown on it. Heck yeah!
An announcer came on letting us know that the lights would be dimming soon enough and that we should all find our seats. Lights go down, BAM, Star Wars starts playing! It’s the actual orchestra playing it while images of the films are playing for us! It’s a great moment! We are cheering, we are looking at each other amazed that we are part of this experience…I think all of us teared up five minutes into it with the realization that we are actually here and it’s affecting us way more than we thought it would.
The orchestra stops after a few tunes and Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C-3PO, takes the stage and narrates us through the rest of the show. The concept of the show was interesting…essentially they boiled down the pieces of music into themes and there was pieces of the six films edited together to fit the themes. For example, on the Luke and Leia theme, they showed all sorts of footage of them together.
Claude got to hear his Duel of the Fates, Benoit got to hear his tune which takes place in Dagobah, and I got to hear my all-time favourite, the one where the asteroid chase in Empire Strikes Back occurs. It was a great moment for all of us.
All in all, we really enjoyed the show. Our only complaint (a minor one) is that we would have rather seen more of the orchestra playing the music. For the most part, it was us watching bits of the film while the music played. The thing about orchestral music is that it is note-for-note perfect. So I felt sometimes that we were simply listening to a recorded soundtrack and not witnessing the orchestra playing it in front of us! So when they had the cameras filming the orchestra, that is when it really hit home and I appreciated it more than when I was watching bits of the film.
Fast fact: Did you know that Luke Skywalker had a bit of a mustache growing in during Return of the Jedi when he saves Leia from the Sail Barge? Never noticed it until seeing it in hi-def!
If you have the chance to see this show, you may as well as it was entertaining to revisit a bit of childhood (alright…adulthood) in this manner.